Blood Storm: The Books of Blood and Iron

by Steven Harper

  She hurried forward, eager to get home and change clothes. Danr called for Kalessa, and the orc woman dropped back so the two of them could converse in low voices.

  The city of Balsia dozed in the sun like a warrior gone to seed. Streets sprawled lazily in all directions, without plan or purpose, sprouting buildings of wood and stone as they went. Here and there, the bones of an ancient stone palisade rose several stories, providing a back wall for some buildings. A mass of people, mostly human, shouted and laughed and rang little bells and begged and cried and created a cacophony that continually assaulted Aisa’s ears and mixed with a continual pungent miasma the place belched up—garlic and oil and body odor and waste. Always the waste. Didn’t people know how to dispose of personal sewage other than to throw it into the streets?

  Despite the noise and smells, Aisa still found this place exciting and interesting. Balsia slurped everyone in—young, old, wealthy, beggar, pious, vulgar—and mixed them into a glorious tangle she had never understood until now. Even here she watched a woman in a blue dress drop a coin into a beggar’s bowl below. Years and years ago, she mused, the woman in blue had been a child and made many choices, all of which had brought her to this spot at this moment, where that beggar, who had also once been a child and who had made an equal number of choices, was sitting. And all those years ago, neither of them had any idea that one day their lives would intersect in even this small way.

  The woman in blue turned away from the beggar, and her face dripped with blood. The beggar fished the coin from his bowl, and blood ran down his hand. The standing water in the street turned scarlet. The cacophony turned to screams of fear. Aisa froze.

  And then it all snapped back to normal. The woman in blue ambled on her way, the beggar pocketed a perfectly normal coin, the water was only scummy water, the noise was only street noise. A scream, however, echoed inside her mind. Aisa tried not to listen.

  Kalessa broke away from Danr and hurried forward. “Are you all right, sister?”

  Aisa coughed and forced herself forward. “Fine. Just lost in thought.”

  “Troll,” Talfi said, oblivious. He jerked his head at a hulking figure who stumped down the street like an angry cartload of stone. Every inch of skin was bundled beneath rags and bandages. Heavy gloves and boots covered hands and feet, and a heavy cloak with a deep hood was pulled across its head, pushing the features into shadow. It—he?—kept well to the shady side of the street.

  It was unusual to see an actual troll out in full daylight. Even the tiniest ray of sunlight caused the Stane great pain. Danr’s human side allowed him more free passage through the day. He was also better-looking, with that strong chin and that husky voice and that smooth, dark skin she wanted to run her hands over. And those eyes. Those brown, soulful eyes that turned her insides to sweet butter whenever she looked into them. It was probably a good thing that Ranadar’s glamour changed them, or she would melt right here on the street. She almost smiled at the thought.

  A pair of nut-brown figures pushed a cart piled high with bread over the cobbles. They chattered and snorted behind knotty fingers while their saillike ears quivered in the dank air. “And there, two fairies,” Danr said in that wonderful voice.

  “Don’t say it,” Ranadar warned.

  “Would we dream of it?” Aisa shot back, feeling better with the banter.

  “And here, an orc.” Kalessa tapped her own chest as they walked.

  Aisa smiled. “Did anyone ever think Kin and Stane and Fae would live together in the same city?”

  “Not even the Nine foresaw such a thing,” Kalessa admitted.

  Danr twisted around to watch the troll disappear around a corner. “Huh. Out in daylight,” he said, echoing Aisa’s earlier thought. “I wonder why.”

  “Everyone has emergencies,” Ranadar said. “Perhaps he—”

  What happened next came so fast, it was not until later that Aisa was able to fully sort it all out. A man carrying a small keg slipped—probably on excrement—and dropped his burden just as he passed Ranadar. The keg burst open on the stones, flinging hundreds of nails everywhere. Iron nails. One of them flew up and landed in Ranadar’s collar. He cried out. Talfi, acting on instinct, snatched the nail away and yanked the white-faced elf free of the debris. But the damage was done. Danr’s glamour burst like a fragile bubble, and he stood in full view of the street. The man with the nails yelped and scuttled away.

  “What the—?” Danr looked down at himself.

  “Oh no,” Kalessa moaned.

  “Quickly!” Aisa said. “We have to get him out of here.”

  It was too late. A man pointed. “Hey! Half troll!”

  “It’s Danr the Hero!”

  “Danr! He’s on our street!”

  “The Iron Axe.”

  A crowd swirled toward them like a gathering storm as word rippled up and down the street. People boiled out of shops and leaned out of windows. Traffic came to a halt. Kalessa drew her knife and it sprang into the shape of a broadsword nearly as tall as she was.

  “Stay back!” she barked.

  The crowd faltered, then someone said, “It’s Kalessa! And Talfi—the boy who can’t die!”

  “The Nine,” Talfi swore. Twice in the past year, people had unexpectedly killed him just to see if he would come back to life. It was alarming, but Aisa did not find it in the least surprising. People could show wonderful acts of compassion and wonder, but more often they were selfish and thoughtless. Talfi continued to prop Ranadar upright. Now that the elf wasn’t so close to the cold iron, he was recovering, but slowly.

  Aisa flicked a glance up and down the street. They were trapped smack in the middle of a block, with a wall directly behind them, street in front of them, and no handy alleys or intersections to make good an escape.

  “It’s all right, Kalessa.” Danr faced the crowd, forced a smile to his face, and waved a meaty hand. “Good day, everyone! We’re just out for a walk! Nothing special.”

  “Tell us about the Battle of the Twist!” someone shouted.

  “As if a half-blood could be that brave!”

  “How did you face down the Queen of the Elves?”

  A pregnant woman thrust her belly toward him. “Will you bless my baby?”

  “Don’t let a half-blood touch her!”

  “I don’t think—” Danr began.

  A girl, not yet twenty, dodged around Kalessa and snatched the hat from Danr’s head. Aisa saw how the pain sunlight struck his face, and she grabbed angrily for the girl, but she was already gone.

  “Half-blood, all monster!” shouted someone else.

  “He’s so ugly.”

  “Is it true you talk to Death?”

  The crowd pressed forward, half in admiration, half in hostility. Kalessa swung her sword in a short arc, causing the people in the front to flinch back, but those behind pressed forward. Aisa desperately looked about. It was always like this. Half the crowd adored him, half the crowd hated him. She and Danr had never met another half-blood, and for all either of them knew, Danr was the only one. But the Stane—and the Fae—were mistrusted at best, despised at worst, and just the idea of mixing one of them with the Kin set off waves of revulsion among otherwise peaceful people.

  “Ranadar!” she hissed at him. “Can you—?”

  “I can try,” Ranadar gasped. “But not all of us, and not far. That iron hurt.”

  “Half-blood filth!”

  “He’s a hero, you Vik-sucking pig!”

  “Don’t call my wife a pig.”

  A glob of mud flew at Danr. He ducked, and it struck the wall behind him. The street before them was a mass of people, pushing and shoving. Aisa’s heart pounded.

  “Back away!” Danr roared.

  Suddenly, Aisa was back at the Battle of the Twist. The Iron Axe sizzled in Danr’s hand. The crowd was an army of Fae, and they fell in clouds of blood beneath the Axe’s blade. Flames devoured entire trees and fairies dove screaming into the lake. A cloaked figure watched fro
m the flames. Then Aisa was back beside Danr, her heart pounding so fast her head ached. She forced herself to keep control. Danr’s face was tense, and Aisa understood that he was balanced between fear and anger, just as he had been during the Battle of the Twist. Vik. The crowd was provoking someone who could tear a squid in half with his bare hands. A roar rose, half cheer, half growl. Danr made fists.

  “Ranadar, now!” Aisa snapped.

  Ranadar made a small sound. There was a flicker, and Danr was gone. So were Ranadar and Talfi. The crowd fell silent again, then set up a confused babble. Aisa took advantage of the moment to wrap her head scarf around her lower face and melt into the crowd. Kalessa, she knew, was well able to handle herself. Aisa eeled through the crowd toward home, trying not to shake.

  Sometime later, both she and Kalessa crept through the side door of a tall, blocky house whose back wall was one of the original city palisades. The moment they entered the main room inside, Danr caught Aisa in a relieved embrace.

  “Thank the Nine!” He held her tight. “I was so worried. Again.”

  “You were worried?” She disentangled herself lightly. “I had to run all the way here and wonder if the Twist had killed you.”

  “We just got here ourselves,” Danr said. The main room of Mrs. Farley’s rooming house had a fireplace, a long table with benches, and a few other pieces of furniture. Danr liked it, Aisa knew, because the windows were small and the room was usually dimly lit. He dropped to one of the benches. “Ranadar only managed to Twist us to the other side of the wall the crowd had pushed us against. It wrecked him. We had to carry him home without being seen, and that was a trick. Talfi’s upstairs with him now.”

  “That boy has it bad,” Kalessa said.

  “So do I,” Danr added, reaching out for Aisa’s hand. “Let’s not do this again.”

  “Gladly.” Aisa squeezed. “Though it will make for good conversation at the prince’s celebration tomorrow.”

  Danr groaned and put his face in both his hands. “Could we just send him a note saying I’m sick?”

  “We could,” Aisa said, “but we would still have to attend. The event is in your honor.”

  “You avoided the prince’s invitation for nearly a month,” Kalessa added. “No small feat.”

  “I’d rather avoid it forever,” Danr sighed. “I’m a farmer, not a … whatever it is the prince thinks I am.”

  Aisa nodded. This was not something they had foreseen. Word of the half man, half troll who had wielded the Iron Axe, killed countless Fae, razed the elven city of Palana, and faced down the Queen of the Elves herself had spread with incredible speed. The stories were embellished with every telling, until Danr became twenty feet tall, the son of Olar the bird king and a trollwife, able to tear mountains from their roots. Talfi figured in a number of stories as the boy who could not die, as did Kalessa, the warrior orc whose sword could cleave an oak tree. Somehow Aisa was largely missed, and for this she was glad, though a few stories mentioned a slave girl who stopped the angry troll from sundering the continent a second time. Ranadar had escaped notice entirely.

  However, vanishingly few people had ever seen a half troll, which made it easy to pick Danr out of a crowd. Talfi and even Kalessa could hide their identities, but Danr attracted attention no matter where they went. Whenever they passed through a village, town, or city, the local lord or mayor or other person in charge insisted on showing hospitality, which sounded nice at first—free food and shelter were never a bad thing—but such events often evolved into problematic celebrations that lasted days or even a week. Danr was asked to judge jousting events, attend special religious ceremonies, bless marriages, and even battle local champions. Danr did his best to be graceful, but he had the manners of the farmer’s thrall he had been until just last year, and he was never comfortable in the center of attention. After a particularly embarrassing incident involving a wedding and a pair of kittens, Aisa had appointed herself his social assistant, and she had learned to steer him through difficult waters.

  She had definitely learned the value of the polite no, but the receptions and parties and parades had delayed them over and over, which was why it had taken them more than a year to get to the city of Balsia. They had hoped that in a city as large and cosmopolitan as this one, they could blend in, but they had quickly learned that more people in a city just meant more people to recognize them, and the local ruler—a prince—was that much harder to refuse.

  “You’ll do fine, my Hamzu.” Aisa stroked his hair. “I’ll be right there to ensure it.”

  He grabbed her hand. “Don’t leave me alone for a moment. You remember the kittens.”

  “We all remember the kittens,” Kalessa said.

  “I will not dare leave you,” Aisa promised with a laugh. “Except to change out of these wet clothes.”

  Upstairs, Aisa poked her head into the room Talfi shared with Ranadar to ensure that they were indeed all right. Ranadar was resting, and Talfi assured her he would be perfectly fine in a few minutes. Twisting was draining enough, let alone under duress and with so much iron about.

  In her own room with Kalessa, Aisa quickly changed out of her chilly clothes while Kalessa worked her way out of her woven armor. She sponged away the stench of squid, donned dry clothes, and settled her nerves by fussing with the potted plants on the room’s little balcony. The plants didn’t need tending, but touching and pruning and plucking calmed her, made her feel at home in ways she hadn’t realized were possible. Back when she was a slave in Farek’s house in northern Balsia, gardening had been a terrible chore done to benefit someone else. Now that she was a free woman, living in the world’s largest city and able to grow what she liked, she found she enjoyed it.

  When she planted seeds or started a cutting, she could almost see the plant that would emerge. When it finally did, it often produced a surprise or two—a diverging stem or flowers of a different color or faster growth—but still the plant remained true to its nature. Marigold still cured thrush and helped when a woman’s cycle became irregular. Vervain relieved fierce, light-sensitive headaches. Ginger eased morning sickness. It didn’t matter if the plant had one stem or two, green flowers or red—it always followed its inner self. How admirable.

  One of the echinacea plants was nearing its bloom. The head, however, had two nascent flowers instead of the usual one. Both tiny buds were beautiful, but already Aisa could see that the plant had barely enough resources to bring out one flower. With two buds, neither could bloom. Aisa held out her scissors, then hesitated. Perhaps the echinacea could manage with both.

  But no. The greater plan would be served by sacrificing the errant bloom. Without further thought, she snipped it off.

  As it fell, the other plants stirred in a passing breeze. For a moment, Aisa thought the leaves formed a tired face. The breeze even made the face nod. Then it was gone. Aisa shook her head. A trick of light and shadow.

  “Excuse me, sister.” Kalessa edged around Aisa with her armor, which was woven together from strips of wyrm-skin leather fashioned into a supple but strong creation that both protected her from blades and granted mobility. She hung it over the balcony rail.

  “Don’t let that drip into the pots,” Aisa cautioned. “Tannin is bad for the plants.”

  “It is damp, not dripping.” Kalessa checked to make sure nothing would tumble over the edge to the street three stories below. Finding this rooming house had been a small miracle. The rent was affordable, the landlady had accepted two humans, an elf, an orc, and a half troll without blinking, and the rooms had decent-sized balconies that opened out onto the street. Mrs. Farley was also willing to keep their presence a secret, something that seemed to come out of both a sense of awe and a sense of self-preservation. If word got out that Danr was living here, regular crowds would no doubt gather outside on a regular basis, and if their previous experiences were any indication, more than a few people would barge right in.

  Kalessa leaned on the balcony rail. A busy, smelly s
treet clambered down the gentle slope below. “Now I must tell you something, my sister,” she said. “Before our walk home provided us with other concerns, Danr asked me for a favor.”

  “He did? What favor?”

  “He asked me to intercede on his behalf.” Kalessa flicked her auburn braid over one shoulder. “I am to ask you, as a sister, to go and talk to him.”

  “I talk to him all the time,” Aisa replied too casually.

  “He wants to discuss the two of you because something is wrong, but he says every time he tries to bring it up, you avoid him. Is that true, sister?”

  The pointed question—the only kind Kalessa asked—caught Aisa off guard. “Somewhat, I suppose.”

  “Why?” Another pointed question.

  “Because I … have not wished to discuss it.”

  “Huh. That seems foolish. How will he know what you want if you will not say?”

  Aisa wanted to say that he should already know, that he should be perfectly aware of what she wanted after all this time. But her practical side would not allow such foolishness. “He cannot.”

  “Then it is settled.” Kalessa strode for the door. “I will tell him.”

  “What?” Aisa turned for her. “I never said—”

  But Kalessa already had the door open. Danr was standing in it, filling the doorway with his bulk. He must have been standing outside it. And for how long?

  “She is ready to talk now,” Kalessa reported. “I will ask Mrs. Farley to fetch strong drink.”

  “I really don’t want anything,” Danr said.

  “For me,” Kalessa clarified, and left.

  Danr blinked at the closed door, then turned to Aisa. “Hello.”